Hillary Clinton is not a New Yorker and she never will be. She represents the abuse and corruption of the US Constitutional system, and you know why. Most likely, Mr Obama's eloquence will be used to acquiesce the people into complacently accepting four more yesrs of the ruling class's robbing of the treasury.

The world waits with bated breadth for Barack Hussein Obama to crystallise into the towering persona that was Abraham Lincoln. Comparisons and similarities aside, it is heartening that, like Abe, Obama is also gently persuasive and elegantly firm: we in Pakistan, especially, keenly await and look forward to better 'upfront' and 'look-in-the-eye' values, to mark US - Pakistan relations.

Tarsney utilizes Lincoln's membership in the Republican party as a method of distinguishing him from Obama, likening the latter to Buchanan based upon party affiliation. A brief perusal of party histories in the United States will readily reveal that the parties of today are nothing like the parties of ca. 150 years ago...one only needs to look to the 1960's to see the vast movement from blue to red in the deep south and to the past eight years to see the vast republican shift from small to big government. Although Tarsney may have a point, the use of party affiliations to make that point is a thin argument.

As much as I was not swayed into the pandemonium of most of this campaign after watching Barrack's speech I was very touched. This man really cares about his nation and the globe. Honest Abe, indeed is reborn. Mr. President....congratulations, you have inspired us all. Your passion will guide us to work harder for everyones future.

Let me suggest that Barack Obama will be our next James Buchanan, the President who preceded Lincoln. Lincoln, after all, was a Republican. Buchanan, a Democrat like Obama, supported the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which held that Blacks had no rights that the law was bound to respect. Obama supports Roe v White, which held that a child in the womb is not a person "in the whole sense of the word" and equally has no legal protection. Obama, like Buchanan, believes that a Supreme Court fiat will settle the most contentious social issue of our time. Obama speaks well, but pretty words are not going to dissipate an irrrepressible conflict.

As the one commenter very astutely mentions, that U.S. Pakistani relations are a very important and unfortunately neglected and very much misunderstood, especially by American government experts, and many American people. I wonder if MattenMM would like to work with a think tank I am putting together to help improve our understanding of Pakistan/India/NWFP and coming up with new ideas to work with the Pakistani people. I lived in Afganistan, Pakistan and India for almot 8 years in the 1970's, speak Urdu and Hindi/Hindustani, and am perhaps America' lone expert who has realized for a long time how important this part of the world is. Searc DrRenShen on the web and you should be able to find me and looking forward to hearing your ideas.

Different people will have different opinions on which - if any - of Lincoln's speeches could be characterised as "greatest".One of the least known is that made to Congress in January 1848 defending the right of self-determination in the context of Texas's secession from Mexico. Following Lincoln's reconstitution of the Washington regime from one based on the ideal of self-determination to one based on the reality of military domination, his January 1848 speech became an embarrassment. In the environment of Lincoln hagiography that developed to legitimise the new regime, it was all but deleted from the history books . . . for reasons that should be apparent from this excerpt:"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones."Abraham Lincoln, 12 January 1848.